Transportation Gears Up for Revival : Propositions: Approval of three ballot measures will add $18.5 billion for construction over 10 years.

California’s moribund transportation business came back to life Wednesday.

Voter approval of Propositions 108, 111 and 116 guarantees that at least $18.5 billion in new money will be available for highway and transit construction over the next 10 years.

“This is a major turnaround,” Caltrans Director Robert K. Best declared at a press conference here. “This will require us to gear up and we will be gearing up quickly . . . so the people who have expressed their trust in government (by voting for the measures) will be seeing projects out on the road.”

Best said Caltrans will ask the California Transportation Commission to approve $257 million in backlogged projects when the commission meets in Sacramento next week. He said construction on some of these stalled projects could begin within three months.

The Caltrans director also said passage of Proposition 111 assured completion as scheduled in 1993 of the Century Freeway and Harbor Transitway in Los Angeles.

Over the next year Caltrans should receive almost $1 billion in new revenue--about $635 million from Proposition 111, which increases the gasoline tax and truck weight fees, and another $300 million from Proposition 108, one of the two rail bond issues approved Tuesday.

Best said some of this money will be used to hire about 1,000 new engineers and other workers and to enter into contracts with 200 private consultants.

The new money and new personnel will enable Caltrans to restore its financially starved construction program, while at the same time continuing the earthquake retrofitting that is being financed by a special statewide quarter-cent sales tax increase, the director said.

In addition to approving Proposition 111, which is expected to yield $15.5 billion over 10 years, and Proposition 108, a $1-billion mass transit bond issue, voters also passed Proposition 116, a $1.9-billion rail bond measure that was placed on the ballot by the Planning and Conservation League. The gasoline tax will go up 5 cents Aug. 1 and then rise 1 cent annually for four years.

The task of deciding how much of this new money should be spent on highways, how much on urban transit systems, how much on new or improved intercity rail service will fall largely to the California Transportation Commission.

Pete Hathaway, chief deputy director of the commission, said the group’s first job will be to eliminate more than $500 million worth of projects that have been “on the shelf” for several months because of lack of money.

Once these have been funded, Hathaway said, the commission will start work on a new seven-year State Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP). This will include about $5 billion in new spending--$3 billion for mass transit and $2 billion for highways.

The commission also must integrate Proposition 116, which calls for specific rail projects, with Proposition 108, which does not.

Best was vague about Caltrans’ rail plans, beyond saying that improved service through the San Joaquin Valley would be a “high priority.”

Although current legislation calls for another $1-billion mass transit bond issue in 1992, and a third in 1994, the Caltrans director suggested that the Legislature might decide to drop these two bond measures now that the $1.9-billion Proposition 116 has been approved.